Semantic, Phonetic, and Phonological Knowledge in a Neurocomputational Model of Speech Acquisition

Authors: Cornelia Eckers, Bernd J. Kröger

Abstract:

Relevant literature of early language development is reviewed in the context of our neurocomputational model of speech acquisition. This literature confirms our hypothesis, that phonological knowledge acquisition depends on phonetic in combination with semantic learning. It has been shown that phonetic learning starts at birth, followed by semantic learning, which starts at around 5 months of age. With around 18 months of age the collection of phonological knowledge begins, which is evident from experiments in perceptive development: infants are able to discriminate two objects even if their corresponding speech sounds are similar. Evidence from experiments in productive development indicate that the frequency of producing words correctly increases if semantic knowledge is available in parallel. In consequence the extension of the training data set within our neurocomputational model is described in this paper.